by Thanyarat Doksone and and Todd Pitman, Associated Press

by Thanyarat Doksone and and Todd Pitman, Associated Press

BANGKOK (AP) - Thailand's prime minister begged protesters Thursday to call off their sustained anti-government demonstrations and negotiate an end to the nation's latest crisis.

Yingluck Shinawatra issued the plea even as she easily defeated a no-confidence vote pushed by her opponents, who are heavily outnumbered in Parliament but have taken to the streets in droves to demand not only her ouster but changes that would make the country less democratic.

"Please call off the protests for the country's peace," said Yingluck, who is facing the biggest challenge to her rule since taking office in 2011. "I'm begging you â?¦ because this doesn't make the situation any better," she said just before the no-confidence vote Thursday.

Protesters, most of them sympathetic to the opposition Democrat Party, have taken over or occupied several ministry buildings, which Yingluck said failed to shut down the government but had created the potential for violence.

Yingluck has been extremely reluctant to use force to evict the protesters for fear of escalating the conflict and sparking bloodshed, which would harm investor confidence and the lucrative tourism industry.

On Thursday, hordes of demonstrators gathered around the nation's police headquarters in the center of Bangkok, and went so far as to cut off water and power lines to the compound. Lines of helmeted riot police with shields remained holed up inside, but did nothing to stop them.

The protests are led by former Democrat Party lawmaker Suthep Thaugsuban, who has already rejected negotiations.

His followers have vowed to bring down Yingluck's government, accusing her of being a puppet of her brother Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister and billionaire tycoon who was ousted in a 2006 military coup.

They also refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the elections that brought Yingluck to power, claiming that her Pheu Thai party won a landslide victory with Thaksin's money power.

Suthep says his goal is to replace Yingluck's government with a non-elected council - an apparent call for less democracy, not more. He says the change is necessary to uproot the Shinawatra political machine from Thai politics.

Thaksin, who lives in Dubai to avoid serving a jail term for a corruption conviction he says was politically motivated, is a highly polarizing figure in Thailand. So much so, that an ill-advised bid to push a general amnesty law through parliament - which would have paved the way for his return - sparked the latest wave of protests earlier this month.

On Sunday, more than 100,000 people rallied in Bangkok against Yingluck's government. The numbers have since dwindled, and a few thousand now occupy the Ministry of Finance and other offices.

Yingluck played down the protests, saying "the seizing of the ministries is symbolic, but in reality, we can still work â?¦ the bureaucracy can still run."

On Thursday, Suthep could be seen relaxing on the white marble floors of one vast government office complex, where supportive civil servants posed for pictures with him.

Before Thaksin was toppled in a coup - allegedly for corruption, abuse of power and insulting the nation's revered king - he won over Thailand's rural underclass by introducing populist policies designed to benefit the poor. His political movement grew to become the most successful in modern Thai history.

But his opponents, largely members of the urban middle class and elite, saw him as a threat to democracy and their own privileges, and they have fought back hard. In no small measure, they were helped first with the 2006 coup that overthrew Thaksin, then with hostile judicial rulings and parliamentary maneuvering that removed two pro-Thaksin prime ministers who followed.

Since taking office, Yingluck has managed a fragile detente with the same military that toppled her brother, while facing other major crises like the floods that ravaged the country in 2011, the worst in half a century.

Suthep was deputy prime minister in an administration that cracked down on pro-Thaksin demonstrators who flooded Bangkok's glitziest quarter in 2010 and occupied it for two months. Those protests ended with more than 90 people dead and 2,000 wounded, many of them after a military sweep dispersed the crowds.